Perhaps the greatest failure of our state government during the COVID-19 pandemic was the breakdown of the unemployment insurance system.

As Congress rushed to to approve enhanced payments for millions of Americans put out of work, Hawaii’s unemployment offices, operating on an antiquated 40-year-old computer system, was unable to push out money to those desperately in need.

Tens of thousands unable to get through on the phone found “ainokea” state employees behind locked doors when they tried to resolve their claims in person.

As frantic unpaid citizens waited in vain, the department’s director went on paid stress leave and was later rewarded with a six-figure job in another state agency.

The most maddening thing is that three years later, as thousands of Lahaina fire survivors line up for unemployment benefits, the state has made zero progress in replacing the obsolescent computers at the heart of the COVID-19 fiasco.

According to a recent Honolulu Star-Advertiser story, the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations canceled an $87 million modernization because of litigation over the bidding.

It leaves the agency back at square one in seeking proposals for replacing the obsolete mainframe with a more efficient web-based system, with no completion date in sight.

It’s an all-too-common pattern in decades of attempts to update state computer systems: The first attempt fails, and the process has to start again, often at a cost of millions more.

Or as a federal overseer once said of Honolulu rail, “They never have time to do it right, but they always have time to do it over.”

Honolulu Civil Beat reported last week that the state has put its $1.86 million modernization of business registration computers on hold after spending $500,000, only to have dozens of defects found. A consultant has warned that cost increases are likely.

A $16.5 million project to modernize state financial data systems was scrapped after $7.8 million was spent when the contractor demanded more money, which will now be needed to find a new vendor to complete the job.

The same company is locked in a dispute with the state over a $10.6 million upgrade of the highways computer system, with $3.2 million already spent.

I commented eight years ago about an even earlier botched attempt to modernize the same system. The Ige administration pulled the plug after $8 million was spent when the upgrade wasn’t working.

In that case, at least, the attorney general recovered damages after suing the vendor for using connected lobbyists and “inappropriate political influence” to get the Abercrombie administration to continue payments despite the problems.

These and similar computer debacles reflect persistent mismanagement and a sense of official indifference over several state administrations.

One vendor complained part of the problem is the state buys systems that have succeeded elsewhere but demands so many modifications for local peculiarities that it becomes unworkable.

The Green administration has an opportunity to finally fix this by establishing a consistent protocol across departments that follows best practices to identify the right proven system on first try, and then find the right vendor to install it without endless change orders.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.